A Blind Leap From A Carousel
by FalseEyelashes
Summary: You knew it wasn’t going to end like this. And now, you get to watch them all try to repair the damage. And you get to watch it all fall apart. Again. X3, AU. JeanLogan, JeanScott.


**A Blind Leap From A Carousel**

**Disclaimer: **I highly doubt that I would be posting here if I was the true owner of _X-Men_. I would probably be rolling in all the dough earned opening weekend. And not writing fanfic. What I am trying to ineloquently say is: ain't mine. Don't sue.

**Rating:** PG-13 (I think?)

**Summary: **You knew it wasn't going to end like this. And now you get to watch them all try to repair the damage. And you get to watch it all fall apart. Again. X3, AU. Jean/Logan, Jean/Scott.

**Author's Note:** Not much to say about this story. This is completely movieverse, seeing as I have never read, and really never intend to read, a single comic. Pretty much I'm taking the end of the third movie (Logan killing Jean) and pretending it didn't happen. I thought the ending was fine and all. I just thought it would be fun to look at it all through a different lens; a "what-if" of sorts. But, please. Do read and leave me some feedback. It's what I live for. Thanks, and enjoy!

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Just for the record, she still loves you. She wouldn't bother to torture you if she didn't.

You fucker. Can you feel **this**?

- _Diary_ by Chuck Palahniuk

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You knew it wasn't going to end like this.

You knew she was too pretty, too bright, too much of everything he ever wanted. You knew before he did that he would never be able to do what he had to do. You knew he didn't have it in him. Or, perhaps, the opposite holds true. You knew he had too much in him and that's why he couldn't drive the dagger home; drive it home and through her.

Makes you wonder a little how she managed to kill you so easily.

- - -

He said that he'd die for her and not for the rest of them. You watched it happen. And you think this is a piss-poor example of team unity and would laugh in his face if you could. But you can't. And the ridiculous part of it is that you died for her anyway. You died because she whispered your name in your ear and on your bike you rode and Alkali Lake you found and suddenly you were looking at the love of your goddamn life and then said life was over.

So. Yeah. You died for her. And he would have, too. But he couldn't kill her to save them. He couldn't kill her to save us.

Coward.

But you know you would have probably done the same.

- - -

The mansion aches of ghosts from the past, ghosts of the dead and the cemetery feels far too overcrowded. You're in there too. Well. Not exactly. She kind of shattered you beyond repair and there wasn't anything to place in the ground other than your glasses, and that seemed a bit of a cruel trick.

The funny thing is, she's a ghost herself. It's just she gets a pulse and the whole inhale-exhale thing and something that's a whole lot more difficult to come by, alive or dead: a second chance.

It's kind of like starting over. It just doesn't seem fair that she gets to be here for the renaissance, while you and Xavier are just particles in space or whatever it is she did to you two exactly. Rogue gets to be an etherized version of her self, but at least this way she can bang her boyfriend, and maybe, just maybe, forget about Logan for a little while. Storm gets to be team leader and the rest just try to find a sense of rhythm that's been displaced since she fell under that arctic tidal wave in the name of altruism and heroics. We all get to try and rebuild and try to restart, and the funny thing is, no, the fucking ironic thing is, she gets to be here for it all.

And really. We both know this is all kind of her fault.

- - -

You really don't want to hear what comes next.

He lays her down on the bed, once your bed, but you really don't need it now. He lays her down and crawls on top of her, and he's not like you, he's not like you, he's taller and wider and heavier, weighed down by metal and a hell of a lot more he doesn't bother to talk about.

He doesn't kiss her like you used to. He kisses her like each one might be his last. He inhales her, his fingers wrapped so tight around that long red hair that it just has to hurt. You never did this. You enjoyed her and took your time because you two, you two were going to be married and there really was no hurry there. You had your entire lifetimes to explore each other. You had through sickness and through health, for better or for worse; you had all that left to love each other.

And they say that's supposed to be a really long time.

- - -

They leave the mansion. It makes her cry, or struggle not to, or whatever she does these days, and there really is no point to their being there. Jean got a cold reception upon her return, and really, you can't act surprised.

They stay in shitty motels and he drinks cheap beer and she drinks cheap wine and they quietly bond over smokes and booze. They don't talk together like the two of you used to. Their words are few and seldom and it all revolves around blood and death and terror and things they don't name but hide with shoddy euphemisms. You would never call this romance, and it's doubtful she would either.

This might be what they call unfinished business.

- - -

You wouldn't understand it. No. You wouldn't understand it the way that Logan can get it. They both know what it's like to have two dueling natures within themselves. They both know what it's like to fight human against beast in a purely metaphysical realm the rest of us really have no idea is even happening. You don't. You were always human. You knew compassion and forgiveness and stubbornness and heroism and all that other shit that is supposed to make up a good and decent person.

She was that too. But like some bipolar, schizoid, movie-of-the-week kind of deal, that was only the half of her.

You found that out. The hard way.

- - -

Logan shot the cure into her. Right into her gut. And over she fell, and they say that she was gasping and flailing. Kind of sort of dying without ever flat-lining.

In France they like to talk about _le petit mort_, you know, "the little death." They're talking about orgasms and coming and fucking and that one second where life doesn't matter and neither does time, and, if you're French, you say you just died a little. You think this is bullshit, and that's okay, but this really isn't the point. The point is Logan stabbing her with that cure instead of his fist full of blades was just the first in a string of _petit morts_ that were ultimately going to end with her six feet under. You don't get to change fate. You don't get a say in destiny.

But then again, this could just be a cracked out theory. It could be nothing more than he tried to save her and ultimately failed. Or she was just beyond salvation and redemption and was really just fucked from the start and the rest of us really didn't stand a chance in stopping her fall. It could be that we're basing a whole lot here on the beret-wearing, baguette-chewing French, and really, that's just silly.

The world doesn't have room for romantics like that anymore. You should know. You died for it.

- - -

You remember this. Only it was the bed you two shared and on the sheets that she picked out and that you hated and you reminded her of said hatred every time the two of you made the bed together, the smell of fresh laundry enveloping the room for the night. This is different. She's still lying on her side, palm cupping her head, sheets bunched around her hips and hair a post-coital disaster. But she's sharing a bed with him. And she isn't touching him. And she isn't looking at him like it's Sunday morning and there is all the time in the world and breakfast isn't that important and if you listen you can kind of hear the rain falling. No, this is her with that hard look in her eyes she's adopted since coming back from the grave (you pick which one) and fell from grace.

She talks like stale cigarettes and broken dreams. She talks like it hurts to do so and her voice is a tired, strained thing she doesn't want to use.

"Don't you find it funny how if you were to think you'd live forever you'd probably act the same? You don't just have tomorrow to live through, but instead, an entire eternity with the same people telling the same stories and remembering the same things and you, dealing with the same dirty consequences. It's when we think we're going to die tomorrow, when we can put a date on it, that we finally embrace life and do as we want rather than what we're told. We're only really alive when we see death reflecting in the rearview mirror. The rest of the time? We're little more than the living dead." You don't like what she has to say. And Logan doesn't either.

This isn't your Jean anymore.

This is Jean on Prozac. And maybe that's all the cure really was: a lessening of one's self, finding the remote and turning the volume all the way down until "mute" appears in green on the corner of the screen.

This isn't your Jean anymore. And sadly, this isn't his either.

- - -

Maybe this is how drunk drivers turned vehicular homicide felons behave after an accident. Kind of slow, a constant hangover, trudging through life, because, really, what is there to live for now after fucking up so royally?

You should be glad you're not alive to see this. You should be glad you don't have to live out this sentence with her. That's Logan's job now. And who would have thought the man with the bad hair, equally bad temper and muttonchops would come out as the hero?

You could say that the point is that things never go the way we envision them. The good guy doesn't always get the girl and sometimes when he does, the girl is little more than an empty shell of who she used to be. Sometimes she's scared because only she knows and only you know the things she sees at night and you know and she knows that that little syringe didn't hold the ending and the clock is still ticking.

It just took us straight back to the beginning. Again.

- - -

She apologizes to you at night. She'll be lying there, tight in Logan's arms, he, dead asleep, and she in that fitful stage between waking and dreaming. And she'll apologize. She'll tell you that she's sorry that she killed you. She'll tell you she's just sorry in general. And you know a part of that apology stems from the fact that she's cradled in his arms and not yours. And she's sorry. She doesn't mean to hurt you. Because that's the funny thing about death: Your feelings still get hurt.

She apologies to the professor more than she apologies to you. And that makes sense. You're used to the second fiddle routine and you're actually pretty good at it.

You expected to see the professor here with you. You know what happened to him. Or so you thought. But if anyone is going to cheat death he'd be the one to do it in aces.

Resurrection wasn't meant for the mere mortals.

- - -

Being dead leaves you omniscient in a weird sort of way. You don't just get to see what's going on below you, around you, whatever, but you know, you know exactly what they're thinking and exactly why they are doing the things they do.

It's a little unsettling.

But you know. You know what Magneto can do with a chessboard all alone in a park with no one watching. You know that he doesn't see a chessboard sitting before him, but rather, the entire world, and you know that when he finally mutters the word "checkmate" the world might just start to crumble once again. You know about Mystique or Raven or whatever the world at large temporarily calls her now and how when she's alone in the bathroom she likes to see which parts of her body are turning blue. You know that Rogue is getting closer and closer to accidentally killing her boyfriend during a late-night cuddle session.

You know that Logan should have killed Jean when he had the chance.

It's late and he's asleep and she's not. She's not making any apologies tonight and that kind of has you worried. She buries her head in Logan's neck and moves her legs, restless.

Just as she slides into sleep the mirror cracks above the dresser.

And you shake your head, because you know. Here we go again.

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He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good…that perhaps the days would come when, for the bane and enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats **again** and send them forth to die in a happy city.

- _The Plague_ by Albert Camus

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_**fin. **_

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End file.
